A pair of ghosts and a former prostitute have
made charges of sexual improprieties against Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard,
and in the current climate of sensitivity to clergy sex abuse, this has
been enough to keep the 65-year-old bishop in the center of media attention
he'd rather avoid.http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_20_40/ai_114783738

J. Keith Symons

Palm Beach bishop admits sex abuse.

National Catholic Reporter; Gross, Judy6/19/1998

With the admission of a Florida bishop that he had
sexually abused five boys earlier in his career, the persistent clergy
sex abuse scandal has broken into the ranks of U.S. bishops, prompting
a prominent expert on celibacy to say it is only a matter of time before
Catholics demand reform in the clerical system.

A.W. Richard Sipe, author of Sex, Priests and Power:
Anatomy of a Crisis, called the June 2 resignation of Bishop J. Keith
Symons of Palm Beach, Fla., after an accuser came forward, "another
crack in the Vatican wall."

Archbishop Rembert Weakland resigned on May 25,
2002, after it became known that the Milwaukee Archdiocese in 1998 paid
a $450,000 settlement to a man who claimed Weakland tried to assault him
in 1979.

Bishop J. Kendrick Williams resigned on June
11, 2002, after being accused in lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Louisville
of abusing two minors and an 18-year-old decades ago. Williams denied
the accusations.

Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)
DAVENPORT, Iowa  The Davenport Diocese received notice May 22 of
14 claims against it for clerical sexual abuse of minors. They included
seven more claims against retired Bishop Lawrence D. Soens of Sioux City,
Iowa, who was a Davenport priest before he was made a bishop.

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a
Florida woman who claimed she was molested by a Roman Catholic priest
in the 1960s, but the parties disagree whether a settlement they reached
in principle was ever finalized.

Sins of the Fathers The Springfield, IL Diocese Tries
to Restore Faith and Trust Following Years of Priestly Misconduct

By DAVE BAKKE, STAFF WRITER
SJ-R.com
March 13, 2005

In the past 20 years, three watershed events in the
Springfield Roman Catholic Diocese have shaken, and in some cases destroyed,
the image of the priest and the faith of Catholics.

The Rev. Alvin Campbell was first. Campbell used his
priesthood at St. Maurice Parish in Morrisonville as a tool to seduce
boys. He was convicted as a pedophile in the days when using the words
"pedophile" and "priest" in the same sentence was
unthinkable. In 1985, Campbell pleaded guilty but mentally ill to molestation
charges. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

In the 19 years since Campbell's guilty plea, the
Springfield diocese has earned a reputation in national Catholic circles
as a troubled, volatile place. The list of names of local clergy linked
to scandals from homosexual and heterosexual affairs to embezzlement is
a long one.

Next came Bishop Daniel Ryan. His early years as bishop
were marred by his admitted alcohol abuse for which he received treatment
in the summer of 1986. Ryan's final two years before his resignation in
1999 were spent under the cloud of sexual misconduct accusations.

"Although denied by Bishop Ryan, this behavior
did occur and caused scandal in the church by leading others to do evil,"
the report stated. "It resulted in feelings of hurt and anger, as
well as thoughts of doubt and mistrust, both in the church as an institution
and in its leaders."

Allegation
He is one of about a dozen U.S. bishops who have been accused of sexual
misconduct in recent years. Catholic leaders in Minnesota, where Bishop
Brom once headed the Diocese of Duluth, have paid a settlement to a former
seminarian who alleged that he was coerced into sex. A spokeswoman for
the bishop recently told The Boston Globe that "minimal insurance"
money was paid to the accuser, who agreed to retract his claim. Two archbishops
who helped negotiate the deal in the mid-1990s said the man received roughly
$100,000. The man alleged that in the 1980s, Bishop Brom and other high-ranking
clergymen pressured him and other young men to have sex at a seminary
in Winona, Minn.

Retired Baltimore Archbishop William D. Borders was
accused in two lawsuits yesterday of covering up charges of sexual abuse
against a Catholic priest in his diocese while he was bishop of Orlando,
Fla.

The lawsuits against the Diocese of Orlando, filed
by two men in Florida's Orange County Circuit Court, allege that the Rev.
Vernon F. Uhran sexually abused them at three Orlando-area churches and
on a cross-country road trip in the early 1970s.

The unnamed plaintiffs, each seeking $5 million in
damages, charge that Borders received reports of the abuse but did not
discipline Uhran and concealed the information. The diocese transferred
Uhran from parish to parish, "where he continued to have unfettered
access to minors and was permitted to have frequent sleepovers in the
Rectories," the lawsuits state.

Borders served as archbishop of Orlando from its creation
in 1968 until 1974, and was archbishop of Baltimore from 1974 until retiring
in 1989.